Phi for All

In trying to pick through your post and figure out what you're really asking here, it seems like you're saying, "I think your way of moderating makes me look bad. You don't understand what I'm talking about, you keep asking stupid questions about my ideas, which are completely clear to me. You don't understand me so your ignorance makes you unqualified to judge my writing." Is that about right?

But it's neither. It's not soapboxing because Trimidity isn't pushing an agenda she isn't willing to discuss, and it's not off-topic because Trimidity was responding to why atheism might be considered a religion. It seems perfectly legitimate to spotlight why atheists are forced to discuss god(s) with theists, especially if those discussions are being used to support the ridiculous notion that talking about why you don't believe in god(s) makes you religious. And the topic is "Can atheists be religious?", in case you didn't know.

Don't fall for this, folks. Moontanman is trying to lure you into the water and catch it on camera when the gator takes your kumquats.

I see the problem now. You were asserting your opinion like it was fact, and that brought out the skeptic reaction. You're certainly entitled to your opinion.

It should be no surprise to anyone that theists want to distort the definition of religion to be as inclusive as possible. Evolution favored those with imaginations capable of seeing lions in the shadows, because sometimes there were. In order for that mechanism to work best, the "Sighted" need to convince the rest of the tribe of the importance of their unobserved, unsupported suspicions. They need everyone to be a little religious, to believe using their faith instead of their trust. IMO, this is partly why faith is considered by many to be the strongest form of belief when in reality it's the least supported, relying on chance and persuasion to create emotional and supernatural ties to natural phenomena. When you have nothing really tangible to support your belief, when you know it's based on nothing but feelings and tenuous suppositions, when you know your only real support is that lots of other people use faith to believe in lots of gods and doctrines, it's very important that you recruit as many to your way of thinking as possible. But this is getting a bit ridiculous, this attempt to make atheists into a "group" so they can be caught discussing god and therefore be called "religious". The fact that it doesn't work with anything else (stamp-collecting, politics, everything else that's been named so far) should show you how much you have to torture the definition to make it fit. Atheism is not a religion.

If you can tell us anything about your discovery, please tell us how you can make such an assertive statement. It's inevitamable.

I think you'll find that what underlies both these attributes is a lack of education. Perhaps, before we go extending the lives of everybody, we could redirect a massive amount of money towards informing people. If everyone on the planet got a basic education that included sex and hygiene instruction, history shows us that they'll be healthier and have a lower birthrate. Imagine how many more brilliant minds we could cultivate to work on medical and resource problems if everyone could go to school! I think embryonic regeneration looks very promising. I don't read much about how it would affect our longevity, but a big drawback about growing older is having all your parts start failing. If you could regrow teeth and organs, if you could regenerate limbs and bones like brand new, I think it would definitely extend life far beyond what we know now.

And watch out for Skitt's Law too.

Category is not equal to group in this context. You can categorize negatively, but you can't group negatively (is it a group if nobody shows up? On the Bible Camp bus, how many seats do they leave for the atheist group?). Atheists can be a category but they don't form a group. Again, non-stamp collectors don't get together in a group, don't have anything in common universally with each other, other than stamp non-collecting. Technically, a non-stamp collector discussing the subject with a stamp collector isn't even talking about stamps, he's talking about the exact opposite, his non-stamp collecting POV. Technically, if an atheist is discussing why he doesn't believe in god(s) with a theist, it's not a discussion about religion. Only the theist is trying to make it so, the atheist is trying to show why it's NOT a religion discussion. For the atheist, it's a lack of religion discussion.

In context, it looks like they're referring to more than just local or tribal politics, but the bigger, broader aspects of state and federal politics as well.

The research can be used to implement procedures in confessionals and photo booths as well.

! Moderator Note Attacking the idea is what we do in science. Attempts to refute your ideas are NOT insults, as long as they're done in a civil manner. Attacking the person is against SFN rules of civility. Please understand the distinction and if you feel you're being attacked personally, don't hesitate to report the post.

Currently it's being advanced that atheism is a religion only if the atheist mentions it to anyone. At that point, they're showing organized thoughts on the matter and that makes it a religion. But don't tell anyone else. Shhh.

Ah, ExtraSense. Despite the name, that man was not near the front of the line when they were passing out "sense". I do think he had his own herbage and saved the berries for the goats. I'm betting they did, or will, but those pics won't get shared because it would refute the whole "Martian goat shed theory" they're hoping to get funding for. ExtraDense was very clear that those are statues of goats on Mars. Real goats on Mars is just ludicrous. This latest pic could be a statue of a house. Martians honor many things, apparently.

I'll bet ydoaPs was trying to link to a thread by a guy who saw things in photos from Mars. I want to say his name was Farsight, but it was years ago, he wore a tinfoil hat, and now that you mention it I think he was smoking some kind of herbage....

If I tell you how I feel about your hobby, I risk talking too much about it, which would make me some kind of hobbyist, apparently.

The alien's crashed spaceship is completely gone, but the stone house they erected still stands!

Absolutely. Knowing the objections that may be posed to your own stance and being prepared to answer them is a big part of any debate. In this case, you should know that your opponents are going to be mentioning the work environment and shabby treatment sweatshop workers face. You probably have your "low wages are better than no wages" argument well fleshed-out, but you should also touch on the fact that the low wages sweatshop workers receive are usually enough to improve the economy in a region, to the point where better lifestyles will mean eventually sweatshop jobs won't be as attractive as they are now. They can be a temporary way to increase an economy and give people the means to work towards something better.

I find it more than a little disturbing that the definition of religion being used here judges atheism as a religion strictly on how much an atheist defends his stance. If no one brings up religion, this definition allows an atheist to keep his non-belief to himself and avoid being thought religious, but if someone claims belief in god(s) the atheist isn't allowed to share his non-belief stance without being considered religious?! It should be fairly easy to see the conclusions this definition attempts to make are fallacious and unworkable. It's ridiculous that a negative stance about the existence of god(s) is considered a religious one. I shouldn't have to argue that my non-belief is actually a belief. If I choose Christianity as my religion, that may make me a non-Islamist and a non-Buddhist among other things. If I choose nothing as a religion, it should simply make me non-theist, or atheist. I should be able to offer my explanation without it being considered a "religion" just because it's about god(s). If I think hobbies are a complete waste of time and would never be caught dead building a model or collecting stamps and didn't feel shy about telling anybody who will listen, it would be foolish to consider me a hobbyist of any kind. Why on Earth should atheism be considered a religion?

I type in what I want the link to say: Here is a pertinent study. Then I highlight Here is a pertinent study, click the Link button in the edit menu (to the right of the Bulleted List and Numbered List buttons), and paste in the url to the linked site. Click OK and your link is set. Alternately, you can just paste the link afterward: Here is a pertinent study: http://wtt.pauken.org/?page_id=752 This one is pretty easy, imo. I want them to fix the editing so we can break up and respond to a paragraph a few sentences at a time. Right now that's really time-consuming, and used to be a lot easier.

Nothing. From what I've read, gender doesn't have as much bearing on pain tolerance as we once thought. Individuals vary to an astonishing degree in their ability to handle pain. Women get special endorphins during pregnancy to help them handle the industrial-strength pains they face in childbirth, but for general pain, women have slightly less tolerance if anything.

Part of the grit is probably made of rubber from tires. This may be the black part you described. Not to go too off-topic, but I'm hearing this from everywhere. With the economy the way it is, isn't it amazing that existing buildings would kill for more tenants but new construction is going on all over? I wonder if the regulations regarding covering parts of construction that produce dirt and dust haven't been relaxed, in the US at least. That sounds like us, stimulate the economy by increasing the public risk to safety.

It shouldn't use the brain or heart for power. That would mean whoever wears it would have less for normal biological functions (he couldn't be as smart and athletic as someone who's suit wasn't draining him). The suit should have a way to power itself in an interesting way that lets the wearer be vulnerable when you need it (e.g., the suit requires a special mineral that isn't always available, or it needs seawater which is plentiful but not easy to store and carry around). It seems like you're also looking for a way to reflect bad things away from the suit. Excessive temperatures, harsh environments, etc. You need a material (fictional) that deflects energy away or transfers energy into something the suit can use. Maybe the suit could use the blood of the wearer to maintain a low level of operation, and then the rest of the energy comes from the transfer when the suit is exposed to extremes in temperature, kinetic energy from bullets and bombs, electricity from other technology. That way, the more the wearer needs the suit, the more power it will have to sustain it's functions. The wearer would only have the power to defend himself when he was being attacked, and he'd always have just enough energy because the suit is powering its defense from the offense. Does that make sense? Also, you could advance the clock on plastic superconductors, which would allow you to have a rechargeable power source available on any piece of plastic in the suit. The whole suit could be it's own battery, which would mean sunlight is required, giving you another interesting vulnerability. I think the tendency with a magic suit is to have it do too much, protect the wearer from too many things. It sounds logical that the suit would be made to the best of our capabilities, but I think it's much more interesting when a flaw makes something so powerful also very susceptible to a certain attack. Superman would be a pretty boring story line if Kryptonite didn't spoil his invulnerability. Achilles was unstoppable (and therefore very predictable, you don't have to invest any emotion because he'll be fine, he's invincible) unless you could target the tendon connected to his heel. David could kill mighty Goliath if he ignored the parts he could reach and instead went for a head shot with a sling.

! Moderator Note OK, thread closed.

This seems to be a very large part of why your ideas are being savaged. You've come up with a lot of things that only make sense to you. You're trying to share them for perhaps the first time and it's clear your observations are wrong. In science, when this many people tell you you're not making sense, it's time to listen and adapt your stance accordingly. I wonder why it didn't lead you to believe that reality is correct and you're wrong. That should be the default stance, tongue-thinker. Btw, science hasn't made any conclusions about whether God might exist, so it has nothing to be wrong about. Wow, that's really evasive. You have no evidence so you ask others to go look for it to prove your assertions. AND you wonder why people aren't taking you seriously.